Tineco Carpet One Cruiser review: Weigh the options

Two in one: Kitted out with a detachable upholstery hose and head, the Carpet One Cruiser glides between carpet and soft furnishing. The hose snaps into the body of the device easily, and is great for getting into tight spaces on the carpet, or tackling couch stains. I bought a carpet spot cleaner akin to this a couple of years ago, and while the design is similar, the power difference between the two is something to write about.

Regardless of which format the Cruiser is taking, it always benefits from the 1320W power. That is significantly more than you get with most hand-held carpet/upholstery cleaners, and it shows.

Solid performance, even on tough stains: The most pertinent question about a carpet cleaner is if it cleans carpet, and the Carpet One Cruiser fairs well against stubbourn dirt. In all fairness, that is every surface in my house. My entryway rug has now been cleaned twice in its four year lifespan, and the Cruiser did a much more thorough job than the rental I got last time. The dirty water colour was black as a strong cup of coffee, and you can visibly see the difference side by side.

I also pitted the device against months old paint on the carpet after a DIY decorating job. Using the upholstery attachment, the cleaner pulled up most of the stain in a little under five minutes of work. It is barely noticeable now which is good enough for me, but one more round would probably get the rest out for those who are more discerning.

The one tough stain the device faltered on was hair dye. Look, I wasn’t expecting this carpet cleaner to work miracles and get red hair dye off my light grey carpet, but it was worth a shot. Even though the pile has been permanently dyed, the cleaner did make some small difference. It could just be that the carpet around it is cleaner, or that some of the colour faded with the treatment application, but either way it looks a little bit better.

Despite not pulling it all up, I can’t hold that kind of performance against the Carpet One Cruiser. Hair dye is permanent by nature, so any movement on that front was joyfully unexpected.

Burns through water: Despite the 2 litre tank, the cleaner absolutely screams through water. I had to refill after about 10 minutes of spot cleaning. That is around 200ml of water per minute using the upholstery tool alone. Funnily enough the vacuum function seems to be more water efficient. I spent around 15 minutes cleaning my rug and there was still water to spare. Regardless, a little more water efficiency would be welcome. 

Carpet drying function is undercooked: While the integrated carpet drying function dubbed DrySense is a smart inclusion, in practice it doesn’t quite work. The vacuum blows warm air to the carpet underneath it in order to dry the patch you’ve just been working on. Great in theory, or perhaps for spot cleans, but it just takes far too long to practically use the setting. In testing we found that one patch took around five minutes of direct contact to dry. That doesn’t seem like much for a small area, but if you’ve been working on a whole room then that could be hours of running a loud device, square by square. I’d rather just let it air dry.

Water leaks at base station: The cleaner comes with a plastic stand to keep the wet roller brush off your floor, but in our testing the stand itself would end up flooded with dirty water. After cleaning and then leaving it on its own for a few days, I picked it back up to find around 1cm of water pooled in the bottom of the tray. Not only did this reek, but it stopped the rollers from drying despite using the drying setting on the device. Emptying the water tanks before putting the cleaner away stops this issue, but if you’re disorganised, or feeling lazy, you’ll have to put the work in later on anyway. Admittedly the plastic base station did its job and kept my floors safe from the leakage.

Heavy, clunky, hard to manouever: All around the Carpet Cruiser is incredibly difficult to move around and use in the home. The whole contraption weighs just under 10kg, not including the additional water in the tank, and it has simple one directional wheels. Well technically they are “Bi-directional Assit-wheels” - meaning they move both forward and backward, but there is no pivot within the axel which makes turning incredibly difficult. According to Tineco the device has a built-in sensor with smart motion detection which should make it easier to push and pull the cleaner, but that wasn’t obvious in our testing.

The design has also shifted the heavy water tank from a leaning position on the handle, to stand up straight on the machine instead. While this moved the weight from the users’ arm it makes the body of the machine  heavier and contributes to how hard it is to turn. Having the weight further back towards the wheels would be a better arm workout, but it would also free up the front of the brush head to pivot and shift more freely, and would likely make the Carpet One Cruiser a bit easier to manouever on a whole.